Various weapons systems have already been proposed of the type comprising a fixed reference, a launch tube slidably mounted relative to the fixed reference, and a shock absorber interposed between the launch tube and the fixed reference.
Such systems are described, for example, in FR-A-2 625 800, FR-A-2 644 571, and in applicant's French Patent Applications Nos. FR 89 14210, FR 89 1420 FR 90 10684 and FR 91 01621.
For a shoulder-fired weapon, the fixed reference may be in the form of a shoulder piece, a butt, or a pistol grip. In other cases the fixed reference may be in the form of a gun mount.
As shown in FIG. 1, the shock absorbers described in the above-mentioned documents serve essentially to transform an input force Fe of short duration and great intensity as applied to the launch tube while ejecting a projectile into a longer duration and smaller intensity output force Fs as applied to the fixed reference, and as shown in FIG. 2.
For a shoulder weapon, the shock absorber is preferably designed to transform the input force Fe into an output force Fs of amplitude no greater than 12,000N and of duration shorter than 0.2 seconds.
The weapons systems described in the above-mentioned documents have a major advantage. In general, they do indeed enable the peak of the input force Fe to be clipped, thereby avoiding injuring the user.
However, those known weapons systems do not always give satisfaction. Experience has shown that, for projectiles of great mass and/or high ejection velocity, the energy transmitted to the fixed reference is large even if it is spread out over time, and it therefore succeeds in pushing over the firer when firing from the shoulder after some critical length of time Tc.